…I’m… gonna need someone to explain this to me.
Tag: QandA
If you could describe each generation set of games with one word each, what would they be? Remakes are optional depending on how you interpret the question, as well as Black 2 and White 2 for similar reasons.
What an odd question.
Hmm.
Red/Blue/Yellow: Imagination.
Gold/Silver/Crystal: Mystery.
Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald: Discovery.
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: Ambition.
Black/White: Truth.
I haven’t played Black 2 or White 2 yet, so I’ll have to defer an answer on those two.
I’ll leave you to speculate on why I chose those words. :-p
Hello, I’m a BIG fan of your blog. I love it. Anyways, I’ve been contemplating about Pokemon fans wanting a game with all of the regions in it. Though it sounds pretty cool, would this be too much? What’s your opinion on it?
Hmm. Well, simply put, it would be a massive project. The sheer scale of it would make it utterly different to everything Pokémon has done before, as well as extremely difficult, and would necessitate throwing out a lot of the established gameplay and storyline conventions. As cool as it would be, I think that such a mammoth project would be impractical for a cartridge game, and that the details would suffer as the designers attempted to cram everything in. Now, for something like an MMORPG, it might be more practical, but to my knowledge Game Freak have never expressed any interest in MMO Pokémon (besides, I just plain don’t like MMORPGs). Maybe for a strategy game it could work? But no, for a traditional Pokémon game, I just don’t see it happening, and I think the attempt would likely be ruinous.
You’ll most probably cover this in your wrap-up for the Eeveelutions, but because the focus is now on adapting to the environment I see it unlikely that, for example, a bug evolution would occur because it would require a mammal being in a position where it thinks “Screw it, I’mma just be an insect now.” Just realised this wasn’t a question but yeah, I’ll be patiently waiting for that specific entry :3
That is definitely something for the wrap-up entry, but I hadn’t thought of that particular way of looking at it. I’ll certainly look at it now, though, so thanks!
I don’t know, moves like Simple Beam, Reflect Type, Shell Smash, the abilities Scrappy, Tinted Lens, Klutz…
Sorry, when I said “more specific” I meant with regards to what I would actually talk about (should have been more clear there). I honestly don’t think they’re all that interesting except with reference to the Pokémon that use them. Again, it’s something I could easily devote one or two entries to, but I think I would very quickly run out of things to say if I tried to devote a whole series to it.
There are still 10 possible types for new Eeveelutions. Which would you most like to see and why?
Just posting this to let you know that I have, in fact, seen your question – I’ll discuss this, among other things, in the final ‘wrap-up’ entry of the current series, after Glaceon.
Hm, what about doing a little series on Moves/Abilities? I think it could be very interesing.
Discussing what, exactly? Moves and abilities are interesting in the way they interact with specific Pokémon – how they reflect a Pokémon’s design, how they integrate into a Pokémon’s tactics, and so on – but I’m not convinced there’s much to say about the moves and abilities themselves, in isolation, other than “well, this one clearly sucks” and “this one is massively overpowered” and “yeah, this one is kinda meh.” Having said that, I probably will have an entry or two on this whenever I finally get round to that series I keep meaning to do on how I would run Pokémon if I were in charge.
I mean, I’m not exactly saying ‘no,’ but you’re going to need to be more specific to sell me on this.
I’d like to read your take on how stats work. Like, the characteristics (“strong willed”, “somewhat vain”, etc) match with a Pokémon IVs, that is, their natural strenghts and weaknesses, as well as natures. How do you think a naturally aggressive species like, say, Nidoking, is able to have a “Jolly” nature? Also, regarding evolution stones, how do you think they work (speciallly the Dawn stone, which is closely related to gender, taking your own “Pokémon & Genders” theory in consideration)?
Stats first: Well, I’ve always assumed that a ‘Jolly’ nature meant jolly by the standards of that species. A ‘Quiet’ Ludicolo, for instance, is noticeably less outrageous and excitable than the average Ludicolo, but still much louder and crazier than, say, a Jolly Yamask (basically a Yamask who occasionally manages to display a certain black sense of humour about being trapped in a perpetual living hell on the wrong side of the great beyond). You might actually be able to use this to perform a rudimentary psychological comparison of two closely related types of Pokémon – Nidoking and Nidoqueen, for instance, are physically very similar, so Nidoking’s higher offensive stats and lower defensive stats might indicate a universal predisposition towards personality traits like loneliness, rashness, hastiness, and so on (which, of course, would tie in nicely with my ‘theory’ of Pokémon gender – link for new readers).
And stones: The exact physiological mechanism is quite beyond me, I’m afraid, but I did make a suggestion in this post that attempts to explain why some Pokémon use stones to evolve. The conjecture, in brief, is that the forms triggered by the stones used to be natural evolutions of the Pokémon that have them, but have become vestigial because they’re no longer suited to changing environmental conditions – maybe achieving those forms has become too energy-intensive to be practical, or the species has come to benefit more from small size and agility than from power or intelligence. They still have all the genes that code for the evolved form itself, but they no longer possess the regulatory genes that actually trigger the evolution, which now requires some outside stimulus (again, I unfortunately have no idea what exactly this stimulus is or how the stones provide it). I imagine the split evolution patterns of Snorunt and Kirlia indicate something similar: those species used to evolve differently depending on gender (so, millions of years ago, all masculine Kirlia became Gallade and all feminine Snorunt became Froslass, without the need for a Dawn Stone) but, for whatever reason, Gallade and Froslass became unnecessary to the survival of the species, so that male Gardevoir and female Glalie gradually replaced the alternate forms. This is, incidentally, a much easier account to imagine if you accept my belief that Pokémon don’t have biologically differentiated sexes, since there’s no need to explain how on earth Gardevoir started to develop male reproductive organs – in theory, a ‘masculine’ Gardevoir could always have existed and would have been able to reproduce normally, but they would originally have been weird anomalies, whereas now they’re perfectly ordinary.
Explain HM Fly. On Pidgey.
No.
What do you think on the apparant rule of “There is no such thing as an evil Pokémon”? There are clearly Pokémon who do things that can be considered evil (like Litwick and Lampent stealing souls in one animé episode) and there are Pokémon who look (and really should be) evil like Darkrai and Houndoom. Also, said “rule” was mentioned in a season full of Early Installment Weirdness, so what do you think? Can an evil (through no influence) Pokémon exist?
Oy vey.
I presume you’re referring to the dialogue between Pikachu and Ekans in Island of the Giant Pokémon? Personally I give quite a lot of weight to that episode because it’s the only one where we directly hear what they think. There are only a couple of other episodes I can think of that seem to address this question; the other one that I looked at in depth was the Case of the K-9 Caper.
I think the important thing to recognise about what Ekans is saying is that she’s not just saying “hey, don’t look at me." She actually does understand that she does evil things as Jessie’s partner; she is aware of good and evil as concepts. She just doesn’t care, because her master is more important. Furthermore, Pikachu takes this as a totally legitimate excuse.
What I’m getting at is that the vast majority of Pokémon aren’t simply ‘not evil’ but completely amoral, like real animals. Litwick devour souls because it’s just what they do, same as a lion will kill a human if it’s provoked, or stalk and kill a zebra. The difference is that Pokémon do understand morality; they just think it only applies to humans. The Litwick understand that their actions would be considered evil, which arguably means that they are evil, but it’s also how they survive, which arguably means it’s excusable – and I think Pikachu would probably agree, if you asked him about it while he wasn’t currently fighting for his soul.
Morality gets very confusing when you have to accommodate multiple intelligent species, all with different ways of surviving.
